Rash of Power Outages Explained

Bahamas Power and Light Company Limited (BPL) has stabilized its system in Abaco following a series of outages over the weekend and in to Monday morning.

BPL explains that the suspected impact of lightning on a crucial piece of equipment is to blame for two (2) major outages experienced in the past 72hrs.

Bad weather including severe lightning activity impacted the island on Friday (June 10th) causing a total system shutdown early Friday afternoon. Supply was restored to approximately 50% of customers by 4pm on Friday and fully restored island wide by midnight on Saturday.

Following the shutdown, an initial investigation found damage to a major piece of auxiliary equipment at Wilson City Power Station (WCPS). Repairs to the part were hampered by the adverse weather condition and prevented the use of engines at WCPS.

Engines at The Marsh Harbour Power Station (MHPS) were used to supply just over 50% of the island with supply until conditions improved to complete the repairs at WPPS Friday night.

Problems with that piece of equipment resurfaced on Monday morning (June 13) causing a total system shutdown at 2:20. Supply was fully restored just before 8am with supply from MHPS and one of the units at WCPS. Further generation challenges at MHPS caused some customers to lose supply at about 8am until just before 11am on Monday when the other engines at Wilson City were returned to service.

In addition to Friday and Monday’s outages, customers in Abaco were further impacted by an island wide outage on Sunday afternoon lasting about two hours. This particular outage was caused by a faulty substation transformer. Similarly, residents in some of the cays would have experienced periods of supply interruption due to cable faults on the weekend and on Monday.

BPL apologizes to its Abaco customers and assures them that it will be making necessary investments to drastically improve reliability for Abaco and the cays.